Sales over folks, for those of you who bought the dip, congratulations, for those of you that have yet to pull the trigger....

What are you waiting for?

We expect to see the $9,000 level as the next step in the inevitable climb towards a new all time high which we feel strongly about happening before this year is over.

As always, buy the dips, hold on to your bitcoins for as long as you can and spread the word. Tell your friends, your relatives and anyone else who will stand around long enough to listen about Bitcoins, believe me you will be doing them a huge favor.

Visit BitvestIRA for information on using your IRA to invest in bitcoin at 20% below spot price. Or call us directly with any questions at 1-844-BIT-VEST (1-844-248-8378)

As commentators and trading analysts spied the start of a potential bull run, Lee reiterated Bitcoin was "oversold."

"It's pretty much what you saw at the end of the 2014 bear market," he continued.

In March 2018, as BTC/USD circled multi-month lows, Lee unveiled his so-called 'Bitcoin Misery Index,' a trading tip tool that he said shows when the time is right to buy Bitcoin en masse.

This week not only Lee, but also investment mogul Tim Draper has reconfirmed his belief in Bitcoin's bigger and better future, telling the audience at his own Blockchain event Thursday that $250,000 was his BTC price target by 2022.

In January 2018, Lee had stated his prediction of $25,000 per Bitcoin by the end of the year, and put his 2022 Bitcoin price at $125,000.

Draper has a fairly good track record for predicting bitcoin price movements, so market observers aren't taking his bullish forecast lightly. In 2015, the venture capitalist accurately predicted that bitcoin would top $10,000 by the end of 2017. BTC prices soared above $13,000 on December 31, 2017.

Draper also predicts that blockchain will disrupt and transform finance, healthcare, and many other industries. "It's honest, it's straightforward, it's incorruptible, and it's fair," he said.

"The blockchain is one of the most transformational technologies that has happened in the history of the world," he told the San Mateo Daily Journal. "And it is totally worth celebrating."

Draper isn't the only billionaire who's betting big on blockchain. The Rockefeller family (estimated net worth: $1 trillion) has partnered with the cryptocurrency investor group CoinFund to help entrepreneurs launch blockchain-based businesses.

David Pakman, a partner in Venrock - the venture-capital arm of the Rockefeller family - said his VC firm is not interested in turning short-term profits, but in making a long-term investment in blockchain.

In 2014, Draper made
headlines after buying 30,000 bitcoins for $600 apiece (total price paid: $18.5 million) at an auction by the U.S. Marshals Service, a law-enforcement arm of the Department of Justice. The Justice Department frequently auctions off property seized during criminal raids.

At today's bitcoin price of roughly $8,000 a token, Draper's stake is now worth about $240 million. That's not a bad return for a four-year investment.

San Francisco-based Pantera Capital Management called $6,500 the probable low for bitcoin in the current bear market. The investment firm also said it was "highly likely" that bitcoin will hit new highs and exceed $20,000 within a year. Pantera, a leading voice in the crypto market, makes rare-but significant-short-term calls.

"I rarely have such strong conviction on timing," Dan Morehead, chief executive and co-chief investment officer at Pantera, wrote in his April newsletter. "A wall of institutional money will drive the markets much higher."

Mr. Morehead, whose firm has invested in digital currencies and blockchain technologies for four years, said he typically steers clear of making short-term trading calls. He said he's only made four cryptocurrency trade recommendations: three of which were buy calls and one was a sell recommendation. But he said he feels particularly confident about his bullish call on bitcoin now.

Bitcoin recently traded at about $7,800 after hovering around $7,000 for much of the past few weeks, according to research site CoinDesk. Prices rallied by about $1,000 in an hour Thursday morning in New York on heavy trading volume, one of its sharpest rallies of the year.

In his monthly letter, Mr. Morehead also cited selling for tax purposes as a headwind for the market.

"I could imagine that a portion of the selling pressure on the market in general has been unintended tax positions," he said.

To be sure, it isn't clear yet that institutional investors will in fact play a prominent role in pushing the crypto market higher in the coming months. The launch of bitcoin futures trading in the U.S. late last year was a step toward attracting more institutional investors. But bitcoin futures remain a relatively small market compared with bitcoin itself or other futures markets.

Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) has officially released data which proves that the country is one of the foremost leaders in the world of Bitcoin trading.

According to the country's financial watchdog, a minimum of 3.5 million people was trading digital currencies on Japan's 17 domestic exchanges at the end of March. The data also shows that a resounding 84 percent of those individuals fall between the ages of 20 and 40.

The commonality in age does not come as a surprise. Earlier this month, Bitcoinist reported on New R25's questioning of 4,734 male employees in Japan, aged 25-30, between January and March of 2018. The respondents' answers revealed that approximately 14 percent owned some form of virtual currency, while 90 percent of those claimed they bought it as an investment.

The FSA also revealed that Bitcoin trading volume in March 2017 was $97 billion. As a point of comparison, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was trading at $22 million three years prior.

Likewise, the trading of margins, credit, and Bitcoin futures was up to $543 billion last year, compared to just $2 million in 2014.

The FSA's report comes at a time when Japan is making every effort to lead the world in effective cryptocurrency regulation. Most recently, the country unveiled guidelines for effectively regulating Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) while still ensuring positive growth.

The popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin received an unexplained surge that boosted the values overnight. The digital currency prices rose by over $1,000 scaling $8,000-mark for the first time in two weeks. Bitcoin was trading at a price of $8,111.82 up 2.47% percent on Coindesk at the time of reporting. The biggest hour of trading in Bitcoin in its entire history was recorded yesterday night with over $270 millions virtual coins changing hands in 55 minutes.

The Bitcoin price received a boost of over $1,000 with over 38,000 coins changing hands. However, there is no clear explanation for the sudden jump in price. Maybe as cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile in nature and subject to big price swings such a development happens.

"In this scenario traders with short positions will start to lose money and liquidate their positions by buying bitcoin," Ed Cooper, head of mobile at fintech startup Revolut, told The Independent.

"This causes the price to rise further and as more people start to notice the rise they buy in for a quick gain. This continues the cycle," he added.

Despite being down more than 60 percent from its all time high, the price of 1 Bitcoin - around $7,000 at the time of writing ($7,116 at press time - Cointelegraph) - still deters many people from entering the market. Even though Bitcoin is on the main page of many online newspapers since mid-2017, most people still do not know they can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. So let's set the record straight: 1 Bitcoin can be divided into 100 million satoshis (the smallest Bitcoin unit). Just because one cannot afford a full gold bar - which are $600,000 a piece - does not mean one cannot buy a gold coin or invest as little as $126 through a Gold ETF to get exposure to gold. The same thing can be done with Bitcoin.

Assuming a world population of 7 bln people, it means that there are 300,000 satoshis available per human being, or 0.003 Bitcoin. Since several studies have estimated that 3 to 4 mln Bitcoins have been lost in the early years, the true number is probably closer to 220 - 250,000 satoshis per person.

This problem led to an exuberant rally at the end of 2017, when all the coins below $1 suddenly started going up as many thought they were "cheap". As each coin has a different supply, the price of one coin is irrelevant, what matters is the market capitalization of the outstanding supply and whether a particular coin has a future or not. Since this rally, most of these coins have gone down 80 percent + as these increases never made sense in the first place.

Remember that there are more millionaires in the world than there will ever be Bitcoins, so the price of 1 Bitcoin will soon not be the right metric, but rather 1 mBTC (1 thousandth of a Bitcoin) or even 1 satoshi. The current market capitalization of Bitcoin is $120 bln, while the US Dollar M2 Money Supply is $14,000 bln and the value of all the gold ever mined is $8,000 bln, so there is still plenty of upside left. At $7,000 per Bitcoin, the price of 1 satoshi is 0.007 US cents - at this price anyone can invest.

The price of Bitcoin is too volatile to invest any money in it

There is no debate that the price of Bitcoin is very volatile, but it is so for good reasons. For the first time in the history of mankind there is a cryptographically secure, decentralized currency not backed by any central bank nor any physical asset. It would actually be even more surprising if Bitcoin were already stable. The volatility issue will likely sort itself out with time when the market capitalization of Bitcoin becomes comparable to that of the assets it is competing with - fiat currencies or gold - or if it goes to zero!

Cryptocurrencies are the most volatile and speculative asset class in the world, so if you invest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, you should know what you are in for and you should only invest what you can afford to lose. Investing only what you can afford to lose gives you something very valuable: time. If you have time, then you will never be forced to sell when the price is low and you can weather market cycles, including severe downturns.

Bitcoin is bad for the environment

When Bitcoin started being mined by Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2009, mining it could be done on a simple laptop and it took on average 10 minutes to mine a block just like it does today. The Bitcoin algorithm is such that it automatically adjusts the difficulty of the cryptographic puzzle that miners have to solve to validate a block and receive the reward such that it always takes 10 minutes to mine a block on average. The more resources are added to the Bitcoin network, the higher the difficulty. This difficulty is what makes the Bitcoin network the most powerful and hence most secure on Earth.

The reason miners have invested billions of US dollars in specialized mining equipment is because Bitcoin is so valuable - it is not as a result of an increase in the number of users nor the number of transactions. As long as Bitcoin is valuable, companies will invest in mining equipment to get the reward that comes with successfully mining a block. These miners consume large quantities of electricity to run their operations, and this is what has been heavily criticized. But since the cost of electricity is the main operating cost for miners, they are always looking for cheap electricity around the world. Electricity is cheap where there is a surplus of it, and this usually happens in countries that have large
renewable resources, so the net impact of running a mining operation in a country that has excess hydro capacity for example may not be as bad as what has been written.

At $7,000 per Bitcoin, the current annual cost of the Bitcoin network is $4.6 bln, and a sizable portion of it spent on electricity bills. But what the Bitcoin network provides for this cost is a Blockchain that is unhackable by any existing computer or technology on the planet.

While Bitcoin has been targeted by environmentalists, the legacy fiat system is not perfect either. A lot of resources are also dedicated to running datacenters, building and powering bank branches and printing banknotes just to name a few. The US Federal Reserve alone spends $700 mln a year just to print dollar bills. What makes Bitcoin an easy target is simply that it is relatively easy to figure out how much electricity it consumes.

40 percent of All Bitcoins Are Controlled by 1,000 people

Another myth is that supposedly 40 percent of Bitcoins are held by only 1,000 people. The reality is that this is pure speculation. What we know for sure is that there are currently 24 mln Bitcoin wallets. However, one person may have hundreds of wallets while one wallet may hold Bitcoins belonging to thousands, or millions of people, which makes any analysis of the concentration of wealth among Bitcoin holders quite impossible.

Disclaimer: The information contained herein is not guaranteed, does not purport to be comprehensive and is strictly for information purposes only. It should not be regarded as investment/trading advice. All the information is believed to come from reliable sources. BitvestMint llc does not warrant the accuracy, correctness, or completeness of information in its analysis and therefore will not be liable for any loss incurred.